Fairtrade Nestlé chocolate still not fair enough for our health

It’s very admirable to see Nestlé, a company previously villified for its negative contributions to public health, now paying Fairtrade prices for its raw ingredients. However it must also be reassuring to the farmers that the UK government has backed this move. Surely, for the good of the nation’s health, they should be discouraging consumption of chocolate, putting more taxes on it and reducing sales, thereby reducing the Fairtrade revenue of developing world farmers. Good thing for them that our ethics mix better with finance than our public health system.

I’m not against Fairtrade at all, but chocolate bars being cheaper than a piece of fruit is not an effective way to impact on the developed world obesity epidemic.